


your crown of thorns holds roses

by quensty



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, it is all very ew but also aw, other canon compliant relationships in the backdrop, vague depictions of violence and...some lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 10:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7798387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quensty/pseuds/quensty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three days after he signs his death sentence to Palmetto State, five after Andrew Minyard sends him flying breathless to the ground, Neil's gaze snaps to the locker room mirror and stares, frozen, at the word <strong><em>threat</em></strong> scrawled along his spinal cord in terrifying, heavy bold.</p><p>All in all, he isn’t thrilled about the situation this puts him in, but, based off the negative connotation, it isn’t one-sided either. On the bright side, at least this means his soulmate doesn’t harbor any grandeur delusions about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your crown of thorns holds roses

**Author's Note:**

> Listen: I want to say that this was a brilliant, thought out plan that I've been telling people to get on for months, but this really all started because I saw a post on tumblr by @titforatat (check out her blog btw it's rad) on WHAT IF HOW YOUR SOULMATE SEES YOU TATTOOED ON YOUR SKIN??? AU and I kind of overreacted. Meaning I ended up writing 4k the day before classes start instead of sleeping. Honestly I'm not even surprised.

In a far, far fairer world, Neil Josten would’ve been born without a soulmate.

There was a story Mary would tell him as a child (in a different life, in a different lie): creatures with four arms, four legs, and two hearts. They were as unbreakable as diamond and lodged fear like stones down the gods’ throats. Afraid of what they could do and unwilling to let opportunity slip between their fingers, the King of the Gods split the creatures apart by the seams.

("Did it hurt?” and, when his mother gave him a quelling look, Nathaniel clarified, “When he cut them?”

Mary burrowed her toes in the dirt. “Like the Devil,” she replied, staring at a spot somewhere very, very far away.)

And that was the image this conjured for Neil, this untold destiny of humankind: wandering, debased. Cursed.

By those standards, the tattooed thoughts of your soulmate should have been a blessed pinpoint in the right direction. Nothing like the people abandoned to an agony of searching for their other half – meaning: the exposition and resolution of your life, where nothing can begin nor end without them.

For a lot of people, that’s probably exactly what it is: a set of contacts that brings the entire world into alarming perspective, that _hey, I guess the world isn’t as large as I thought it was._

Neil, no matter how many people raised their brows in speculation when he said so, had no intention of making it any smaller. He resigned himself to never finding his – if there was one to find, that is, since he was pretty sure whatever soul Nathaniel Wesninski at one point ever had he left at his father’s bloody feet – years ago. A bigger world means more people that don't know his face, more space on a map, more shadows to tuck away in. A smaller world means danger, and danger means death.

(Death is easy fluidity in the way two of his fellow classmates slide together, a blemish just visible under the girl’s tank-top strap. Death is words written across people's knuckles, down jaws, the underside of their wrists’ – **_trustworthy_** or **_amiable_** or **_honest_** – and Neil, thirteen years old and scared for his life, promising himself _, I never want to find mine. Not ever._ )

Three days after he signs his death sentence to Palmetto State, five after Andrew Minyard sends him flying breathless to the ground, Neil's gaze snaps to the locker room mirror and stares, frozen, at the word **_threat_** scrawled along his spinal cord in terrifying, heavy bold.

If Exy didn’t make it bad enough, his grave is indisputably sealed now.

The worst part is Neil already signed off. His signature currently sits on Wymack’s desk, probably, or somewhere equally as foreboding. The damage is done. If he runs, Kevin and Andrew might shrug and forget all about it, Kevin in his frantic race to find another striker sub before the start of the season, Andrew being Andrew, but there is no telling what Wymack will think.

The unsubtle pattern in Wymack’s choice of players is no secret; if he came to Neil with a contract and intent, it means that Neil fits the bill. How he will react to a scoundrel that didn’t make the healthiest first impression disappearing in thin air is open for debate. There is a chance that Wymack will let it go; there is also a chance he won’t.

All in all, he isn’t thrilled about the situation this puts him in, but, based off the negative connotation, it isn’t one-sided either. On the bright side, at least this means his soulmate doesn’t harbor any grandeur delusions about him.

In a month Neil will be off to Palmetto. In a month, Neil will be states away from the Arizona heat in brisk South Carolina winters. In a month, he can leave the tattoo behind with Millport.

**__________________**

 

Around a week into summer practices, when Neil is hurdling himself through Kevin’s overbearing superiority and Andrew’s persistent probes and Nicky’s sly insinuations like parkour, **_Liar_** stitches across the knuckles of his racquet hand. Swallowing around his panic, Neil slaps a band aid on it and doesn’t think about it. Mostly because he’s trying very hard not to murder his teammates.

The morning after he nearly blows his arms out in attempt to wipe the mocking jeer out of Andrew’s voice, he barely has enough energy to process the **_Idiot_** over the curve of his ankle, much less put much thought into it.

He finds **_Enigma_** on the nape of his neck after he walks in on Kevin’s late-night practices, which he takes better than even he thought possible. Probably because, through the pandemonium of finding out that Edgar Allan is transferring districts and the truth about the Moriyamas all while feeling physically – not to mention _emotionally_ – drained, his mind threw it away as irrelevant on a whim.

It’s only two days after the mess in Columbia when the whole ordeal finally hits him square in the chest.

Neil is in the middle of blinking on a pair of contacts when he spots the tail of handwriting under his sleeve and promptly pokes his eye in surprise.

This time, **_Problem_** is carved on the inside of his wrist. It unsettles him. Usually the first impression people gather from Neil Josten is that he’s quiet, reclusive, the closest thing to a backdrop they’ve ever seen. No one has ever looked at Neil and thought _threat_ , much less _problem._ (For the exception of Nathan, but that doesn’t really count; Neil was only a problem because he was with Mary, who was much more of a threat than Neil ever was or will be. Then there’s also Wymack, but that goes without saying.) Snippets of Friday night’s blur and Saturday’s hazy disorientation flash behind Neil’s open eyes, scavenging for something vital he might’ve missed, but all he remembers is Andrew making his life a living hell.

He isn’t sure what to think about that.

So naturally he doesn’t.

**__________________**

 

A few months into the season, Andrew says, “You don’t have any room to judge other people’s problems,” and grabs Neil’s right wrist, fingers clenching tight over the leather bracelet he finds there for emphasis.

Neil schools his expression into something impassive and calm. Though there’s no doubt he’s alarmed, he’s also not surprised. None of the other Foxes had caught the foreign bulge around his long sleeves all afternoon, and if there is anyone who wasn’t fooled, Neil isn’t taken back to know it is Andrew. His pulse pounds **_Fool_** so harshly against the bracelet, Neil’s sure Andrew can feel it through the material.

“I didn’t peg you as the jewelry type,” says Andrew, “which begs the question: what’s a man who can’t stand wearing proper clothes doing with this?”

 _The intimidation can’t go one-sided_ is the logic Neil reasons behind why he stretches his own palm to hover a few inches over Andrew’s carefully concealed neck. When he tenses, Neil widens the gap, but not without saying, “Depends. Why would someone wear turtlenecks under their gear?” He hadn’t taken it off all day, not even for practice.

They stare at each other in silence for a long, drawn-out moment. Andrew doesn’t blink. Neil doesn’t breathe.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you,” Andrew says, “that a big mouth never got anyone anything but a bloody lip?”

“Counting you? Yes.” Neil shrugs. “But I tend to disregard useless information.”

“Then your idiocy knows no bounds, as usual.” Andrew curls his fingers around the hand near his head and smacks the phone he bought Neil earlier that day center in Neil’s open palm. He doesn’t wait for him to say anything else before he slides off the bench and leaves. 

Later on, when ** _Fool_** is replaced by **_Bastard_** like a bruise in the exact same spot Andrew’s thumb compressed Neil’s left wrist, Neil merely swaps the leather between hands. Other, more encompassing setbacks shoulder all notions of tattoos to the sidelines. A ghost of those thoughts brush against his awareness, but only the faintest touch. It really doesn't start to fall into place until much, much later.

**__________________**

 

A handful of weeks pass: Seth Gordon’s death is still a heavy weight on the court; Kevin and Riko dig up Nathaniel from the grave; the atmosphere around the Palmetto Foxes is taut as a strung bow; the tattoos, by then, are a background hum, shifting far faster than Neil can keep up. **_Problem_** and **_Idiot_** are a regular reoccurrence, though. Not the most promising. Not the most flattering, but Neil knows it’s nothing but the truth. He’s almost forgotten to bite his nails over them until – _obviously_ – Kevin reminds him.

He actually stops mid-scorn (which is a glowing sign he’s struck stupid, if Neil’s ever seen one) to ask, voice staggering, “What’s that on your neck?”

Neil’s fingers reach out in assumption to find blood or an injury. He blinks when he doesn’t, sending Kevin a quelling look that goes unnoticed. His eyes are locked on a spot just above his collar, eyes as wide as the court.

A switch of comprehension inside of Neil flicks on in a moment. He scrambles to pull his jersey high over his jaw in a fruitless venture for privacy. “I don’t know if anyone ever said anything to you,” Neil says, “so let me be the first to tell you that it’s generally considered rude to ask others personal questions.”

Kevin scowls. “As if we’re all about niceties,” he says. “How long has this been going on?”

Neil bristles. “That wasn’t rhetorical, Kevin. It’s none of your business.”

“You can’t afford distractions. That,” he says, jabbing, “is a potential problem. It steals your focus away from the game. That makes it my business.”

 _We can’t afford any distractions._  

“You still don’t seem to understand,” says Neil through clenched teeth, “that ‘none of your business’ is my polite way of saying, contrary to popular belief, not everything concerns you. So fuck off.”

Kevin looks ready to check Neil into the plexiglass until it shatters when a loud reverberation echoes against the court walls. Andrew’s stare on them is intense and scrutinizing, both a warning and a question. Kevin looks at Andrew for a moment, then to Neil for a moment longer, a thoughtful look crossing his face like a shadow; there and gone just as suddenly as it came.

“Is this going to be a problem?” he demands finally.

Neil can’t place why he feels like that has a separate meaning he’s supposed to and failing to grasp. The silent message slips like fine silk past metal fingers. “No,” he says, regardless, because it shouldn’t be.

Kevin drops it after one simple, curt nod.

The next day at practice, **_Quick_** is strategically shielded behind a shirt under Neil’s jersey.

**__________________**

 

A couple of weeks later (and in between) he finds himself rapidly recompensing for all the half-looked at and half-thought of notions of his soulmate through the Foxes. It’s not something Neil walks into intentionally. The results of the loud and cluttered evenings spent with the upperclassman are pockets of air in clay.

Slowly, Neil notices how Matt and Dan come together where the other one falls apart. On the court, they’re their own cataclysmic devastations, but here their thoughts splay pleasantly across the other’s skin without shame, without hesitation. Hip against hip, legs tangled together. After a while, separating them becomes as undecipherable as going out to the Atlantic and being told to draw a line where it ends and a new one begins.

Neil doesn’t know why he says it, but one evening, feeling too comfortable and Renee’s tea fogging his senses, he tells Dan, “It’s funny. Sometimes I forget that you two are two different people.”

“The whole soulmate façade tends to do that,” she agrees, piling the plates into the sink. From the living room, they can hear as Allison’s chandelier laugh chimes at something Renee said. “Though, frankly, we’re nothing close to being one of the same person.”

Neil perks. “Really?” he says, because it wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He tosses the paper cups in the recycling bin without taking his eyes off Dan once.

“Yeah.” She shifts on her feet, straining a smile that doesn’t fool Neil for a second. “I mean, I like to think we would’ve ended up together without this nonsense influencing us every step of the way, you know?”

They don’t talk about it for a while, both of them considering while they sneak glances at the other’s turned back.

It’s only when he sets the last plate in the cupboard that she adds, quietly, “It’s something we get a lot. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad about asking.” She stops drying cutlery with an unhappy twist of her lips, gazing at nothing in particular.

“We’re just people. Soulmates come along with every nasty thing that includes. Assuming. Fumbling. Learning. I’ve never bought into that idea that it’s the happily ever after. I mean, I didn’t date Matt because he understood me like no one ever has, I dated him because he was willing to make it work. That’s the only part that matters, really. My parents were soulmates, you know, but they couldn’t work together. They always worked around each other instead.”

“What about you?” she asks. “Were your parents soulmates?”

Every muscle in Neil’s body goes stiff. “No,” he says at last.

Dan nods. After a moment, she hip checks him in effort to lighten the mood and, for her sake, Neil returns her grin with a small smile of his own.

She drops it completely when they rejoin the others, but the conversation lingers in his ears long after the strained arch of her lips leaves her face. No one knows you right away, Dan said to him. Soulmates are just people.

_Except._

 “That kind of person will tear you apart,” Mary tells him, her gaze heavy and hurt. A war rages behind her shuttered eyes. “Someone who knows exactly how you operate before they even know your first name. No one else can destroy you like that.”

_Except._

Neil’s fourth seventh grade teacher chortles at a girl in the front row, whose expression is pinched with worry. In the sun, her wedding ring and the silver handwriting curling up her elbow sparkle as a matched set. “Oh, trust me, you’ll know,” she answers the girl’s question, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. The tattoo gleams like rushing water on jagged rocks. “When you meet the one, it’ll be like a hook tugging behind your belly button. It’ll pull you and pull you in their direction. When you meet them,” she says, “you’ll _glow_.”

_Except._

In a quiet, relatively secluded corner in the campus library, papers pushed to the side, Nicky disagrees.

“Soulmates never make any sense,” Nicky sighs at the sight of Aaron and Katelyn’s intertwined hands. “Personally, I would’ve never guessed bubbly and sweet as his type but.” He shrugs a shoulder, as if there’s nothing to be done.

“I thought you guys were betting.”

“We haven’t seen their tattoos.” Nicky waves a dismissive hand, the _yet_ hanging unsaid between them. “But it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

It’s Neil’s turn to shrug. “If you say so.”

“You sound just like Kevin,” his voice is low, like a discovery like this is one to lament. “You two don’t have a passion outside anything that involves a racquet and a ball.”

“I’m not interested in love-at-first-sight romanticism, Nicky. My life isn’t a Hallmark film.”

“Whoever said anything about love at first sight?” It edges into almost scornful. “It’s not love, it’s.” Nicky taps an unsteady rhythm against his lips and squints at their large, empty vicinity, grappling for the right word. “It’s familiarity,” he says instead. “You take a tour through their head, handpicking the thoughts from a grapevine, and you realize you already recognize everything there. It’s more like: oh. Like, oh, I’ve seen this before. Oh, it was you, it’s going to be you.”

And Neil is – well, there’s no other word but _skeptical_ , is there? At the time, he doesn’t really understand. How can you know someone without knowing them? How can you feel something completely different when there’s nothing different at all?

It’s only in instances: leaning alone at the railing in Columbia; Renee and Andrew’s implausible future of a relationship; Neil leading Andrew’s palm to the scars under his shirt, right where they would both see the word **_Abram_** and **_Capable_** stamped like a chain across his torso; Andrew twisting away from him before he can catch the inky black word of his own, but not before Wymack does.

Neil’s thoughts hum to life, poking holes in the cage.

Then of course shit hits the fan – context: Drake Spear and Riko Moriyama chuck said shit into the fan – and the idea once again walks the plank out of his mind.

**__________________**

 

His slate is wiped clean for a while after that, probably on the grace that the world knows he’s gotten more bullshit than he can handle right now, thanks.

 ** _Idiot_** and **_Liar_** are the first ones back. Typical.  

But the first real, new thought comes on a chilly afternoon a few days past New Years.

Over the course of nine months, Neil’s gotten pretty good at reading the signs of a fresh tattoo making itself at home: a vibrating warmth spreading outwards from his sternum. A heartbeat later, a caress of fingernails over his forearm, down the notches of his spine, along his thighs. Then a mark in loopy letters.

Though he hasn’t felt it in over a month, and standing beaten and bruised and cold on a roof, this is the last place Neil expects it.

“I’m not a hallucination,” Neil points out, then, he feels it: a liquid warmth, a shiver, a wet, winding tip of a sharpie. Andrew said _anything_ , a dropped bored comment that slips past him as the tattoo settles over open wounds. He can’t help the flinch of his shoulders and he curses when, as expected, Andrew catches it from the corner of his eye. He might’ve thought nothing of it if Neil’s wrist didn’t spasm to clutch his waist, a drop of pain where the memory of a thin metal blade is a raw one.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning on hitting me,” Andrew says, sounding completely unimpressed about it. “It won’t end well for you. Though, then again, your ideas rarely ever do.”

“You still have my keys.” It’s an attempt at distraction and Andrew sees through it for what it is. Still, he recedes, plays along, doesn’t push, all while managing to be an asshole about it.

 ** _Pipe dream_** is a pretty word in pretty letters over ugly, open scars. It sounds familiar, albeit vaguely. It takes him a while to remember it might’ve been something Andrew said outside. Something about leaving him alone once they went inside, maybe? His mind works backwards trying to reign something clear and vivid to the surface. At the ten minute mark, Neil huffs and throws away the thought. He can’t be sure, so there’s no point in dwelling.

Also, common sense points out, Neil would be stupid to think this is anything more than a coincidence. ( _Shocker_ , a low, bored voice says in his ear. It sounds remarkably like Andrew.)

Slow comprehension – or the dawn of it, anyways – stirs among the shadows. A shift, a slide in a deep, dark corner of his skull. It stays wedged there this time, drumming its fingers. Waiting.

**__________________**

 

The kisses don’t change anything.

Sexual attraction is as foreign a language as Greek, one he picks up in syllables. There is a whole lecture under Andrew’s hands and lips. The noun-verb agreement pours from Andrew’s throat to his. He teaches Neil punctuation as a tight hold on his hands, a warning scrape of his teeth when Neil tugs on the wrong side of painful. They trade vocabulary in wandering fingers, thumbs at the vulnerable dip of Andrew’s cranium.

If **_Addictive_** and Andrew’s palms snake their path through the inside of Neil’s thigh in coincidental synchrony, it’s exactly that. Coincidence.

The kisses don’t make a difference.

The imprints do.

It isn’t like the words had been rare before, but they never told him anything he or people that knew him didn’t already know. He is the quickest player in Class I Exy, plenty of people have said and say he is an idiot, and he knows better than anyone he’s a compulsive liar.

One could imagine Neil’s nasty surprise when his soulmate suddenly lacks to be anything but unpredictable, and it absolutely drives Neil up the walls. (He doesn’t know what he was expecting; tribulations seem to enjoy flipping Neil’s life on its head.)

 ** _Desirable_** comes under neon lights when Neil has to hook his ankle over the crossbar of his stool to keep from falling over. It stays a lot longer than he’s comfortable with, especially when Kevin could so easily angle his face a little to the side and spot it. He’s desperate enough to consider going out to dance as a last resort just to stop his skin from crawling.

If Neil had any less sense in him, he would’ve shrieked when he found **_Gorgeous_** across his collarbone.

(Nicky definitely makes an inhumane noise when he spots **_Soft hair_** down his jaw, pestering Neil for answers he doesn’t have before Andrew backs him down with an intense look. He turns a look just as intense for completely different reasons on Neil that night on the roof, rubbing at the patch like he’s trying to smear it away.)

It is all very, very wrong. Neil is not supposed to be **_Real_**. He is not supposed to be **_Sublime_**. He is not the **_Steadfast_** and **_Splintered_** crashing in confused shambles on his ribcage.

Neil’s begun to dread the times he’s around Andrew and a new word scrawls somewhere on his body. No matter how many brick walls he puts up, his gaze zeroes in on Andrew no matter where he is in the room. The shadows shift, the idea flickers, but then _nothing will come of this,_ Andrew had said. _There is no ‘this’._

Neil thinks he’s doing them both a favor when he keeps all notions of soulmates in a buried, rattling box.

**__________________**

 

On March 9th, both of them basking under the light streaming in through the windows, Andrew _gold, gold, gold_ , watercolors on paper, the idea that he’s the one writing on Neil's skin does not sound, for the first time, like wishful thinking. Granted, he could’ve had better timing. He’s not stupid enough to believe he can open rip open Pandora’s Box without suffering any consequences. The _0_ in his inbox just fuels his suspicions.

It turns out, when Lola’s voice shakes Neil to the core, he’s right.

It also turns out, when Nathan has his hand around Neil’s throat, it sucks.

Not as much as it sucks when Browning’s eyes track over Neil’s forehead – slowly, purposefully – then looks at him with a raised brow. Neil challenges it with one of his own, daring Browning to make a comment. He already knows what Browning sees. Neil glimpsed it between car exchanges to Baltimore.

(It was the moment Neil had reconsidered Andrew being his soulmate, staring at the word written from one side of his face to the other on tinted glass. He’d said it to Neil’s face less than five hours ago.)

(After that, Neil didn’t doubt it for a second. Only Andrew is that big of a dick.)

“Interesting,” Browning drawls in a voice that betrays all sense of pleasantries. A complete hour of silence has taken its toll on all of them, and Browning's mask crumbles to his feet. “Wouldn’t have been my first call.”

“It's alright,” Neil says, waving a breezy hand. “I get it. Completely normal attitude for a grade-A asshole."

If it wasn’t against protocol, Neil’s sure Browning would have spilled his blistering coffee down Neil’s front by now.  Towns doesn’t look like he would stop him.

He’s not sure if it is pity or consideration, but a nurse with glittering fingernails makes a point of sticking a long bandage over **_Martyr_** before he leaves, which Andrew peels off without hesitation when they’re both bruised and bloody and on their knees.

Andrew eyes the tattoo with the same impassive expression, but Neil catches the subtleties he would’ve missed a few months ago. Surprise leaks out of Andrew where his jaw goes an inch tighter, his eyes meeting Neil’s in a tense gaze. “This doesn’t look like a knife wound to me,” Andrew says in German.

“That’s because it isn’t.”

Andrew doesn’t bother responding, just returns the bandage to its spot and moves on. They don’t talk about it for the rest of the time they spend kneeling there. They don’t talk about it at all, actually, until almost two days later when Andrew pins Neil hips to the bathroom tiles and bites **_Captivating_** into his hip.

Later, on the roof, Neil asks, "So, are we allowed to call it a 'this' now? I mean, you marking my skin should qualify for something, right?"

Andrew considers him. "Destiny being rewritten and dismissed as nonfunctional is not unheard of. It has happened plenty of times for it to not be strange anymore. This," he makes a waving gesture on Neil's knee, "does not mean anything."

Neil shrugs, unconcerned. "I've never been good at being like everyone else."

Andrew blows a plume of smoke in Neil's face. "Yes or no?"

Neil will admit, after, that he probably could’ve guessed the truth before – Before, a messily unraveled ball of yarn, Before. Kevin, who’s had a sneaking suspicion since December, agrees. Renee says he had more important things to worry about. Andrew stands that it’s his natural melodramatic personality to blame. (That or he’s dumber than Andrew gave him credit for. Take your pick.)

Neil fondly traces **_Junkie_** over his Adam’s apple and shrugs.

**__________________**

 

The heat of a freshly printed picture sits curled in Allison’s manicured hand, carefully folded. It’s a good shot, one of the best she’s taken. Black and white. Closely cropped. Regal, she thinks, a kind of quiet that Neil will be able to appreciate. Her smile is crimson and rich as she slips it in Neil’s pocket on his way out the stadium.

In the frame, Andrew and Neil’s hands tangle together like shoelaces. Just above Andrew’s thumb and below Neil’s finger, **_Home_** reads like a promise on their knuckles.

**Author's Note:**

> join me as I cry at quensty.tumblr.com


End file.
